Cholesterol Results

So my cholesterol results are in. Here they are:

At first glance you will notice the significant jump in total cholesterol. It is due largely to increased LDL. Should I be worried? I'm not.

1. LDL isn't as simple as being the "bad cholesterol." There are two main types of LDL, and one of the types is thought of as neutral while the other is considered a sign of heart disease. Those following the paleo diet have increased LDL but it is mainly the neutral version. I'm confident my LDL health has improved, even though the number is way higher. I may have my LDL tested directly (standard testing only calculates LDL, doesn't measure) and analyzed for type.
2. My VLDL and Triglycerides are rock bottom.
3. My TOTAL/HDL and LDL/HDL ratios are better than "optimal." Several studies have shown these ratios are much more important than HDL and LDL numbers individually.
4. My HDL improved by 13%. This is amazing considering that my weekly exercise was dramatically lower than all previous tests. Exercise is shown to increase HDL levels considerably, and the paleo diet more than made up for that.

So I'm pretty sure I've been genetically blessed with excellent cholesterol, at least at this point in my life. However, look at my trends over the last 5 years. HDL was flat. LDL, VLDL, and triglycerides were all increasing at a steady and scary rate. Aging?

Anyone would say that 3 out of the 4 standard categories have improved significantly. The debate is over LDL. More on that later.

Diet at 6 months

Due to higher priorities, I decided to stop my detailed diet tracking at the end of this week. I've reached the 6 month mark and have been diligent in my tracking. My spreadsheet is well past 3,000 rows. I'll publish all the data soon enough and you statisticians can crunch some numbers for me.

I'll get my 6 month blood work done this week to close the loop on this phase.

Here has been one of my favorite "Paleo" meals: MEATZA (pizza with a ground beef crust). Email me for the recipe.

Diet Month 2

I apologize for my lack of updates this summer. I just came out of a 4 week stretch where my daily schedule was:

• Wake up at 6:00 - eat, exercise (some days), go to work
• Work 8-5:00
  
• Family time from 5-9:00
• Work from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am.
• Repeat
  

Thank goodness I was on this carbohydrate restricted diet, otherwise I would have died from exhaustion.

Anyway, here are the stats from my first 70 days of restricting carbs and keeping track of everything. In week 5 I loosened the reigns of my severe carb restriction and added peanuts and veggies back into my diet. I've become addicted to dry roasted peanuts which is where the majority of my carbs are coming from.

The observant among you will notice my continuous calorie increase since week 3. This is consistent with every other diet I've been on. The willpower to resist eating only lasts a couple of weeks (a month if I'm really motivated). But this time I didn't care. I let my body and mind tell me how much to eat. An insightful friend commented that maybe the urge to eat is my body telling me it doesn't want to lose any more weight. I never thought of it that way before.

The graph below is amazing. My body weight is not rising at all with all the food I'm eating. In fact, my body fat is continuing to go down. I've been lifting weights 2-3 days a week and getting noticeably stronger. I'm sure I've added a pound or two of muscle mass in the last 5 weeks while my overall weight has stayed the same.

So far everything I believed going into the diet has been validated. I think the most obvious point I've demonstrated is that the nutrition establishment is wrong in their mantra "calorie in = calories out." The TYPE of calorie matters. If the establishment was right, I would have gained 12 pounds since week 3. Time will tell if my other health assessments (aside from weight loss) are positive from this diet.

Diet: Week 1

Week 1 was pretty dramatic.


My observations include:

• First three days were tough as my body adjusted to ketosis - burning fat for fuel instead of carbohydradtes. I felt fatigued and hungry often.
  
• The body retains a lot more water weight on high carb diets so most of the weight loss was water
• In days 4-7 I experienced no hunger or fatigue
• I'm targeting ~150 g/day of protein. Too much protein is hard on the kidney and can get converted into other things. Suggested protein ranges vary, but for athletic and active males my size I do not believe 150 g/day is excessive.
  
• I'm learning a lot about the make-up of foods as I go. Sometimes I don't look up the nutrition information prior to eating. I ate broccoli on day 1 only to be surprised later by the amount of carbs it contained. I ate quite a bit of chicken on day 7 and was surprised by the amount of protein.
• I had a full physical on day 8 and blood drawn on day 9. Results to follow.
• By the end of the first week my cravings for sweets dropped dramatically. I can attribute some of that to the fact that my mind knows I'm in this for a full year.